Fanfic / Devil Trigger

"Ever thought of becoming a devil hunter?"^note art created by Fables

Devil Trigger is a Crossover between Worm and Devil May Cry. It is a Worm AU fanfic written by SkyRig, formerly known as Starlight's Poet and Demons Anarchy of Pride of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R-eset fame.

The locker incident does more than cause Taylor Hebert to Trigger; it knocks her into a month long coma. When she wakes up, she discovers that her body has changed significantly. She now has white hair, she can run faster than ever before and she's become so much stronger. She can hear things much further away and notice even the tiniest of details. It doesn't take her long to figure out she's gotten herself superpowers, but what she doesn't realize is that she is no longer human.

Taylor also doesn't realize that she's been thrown into a world she never knew existed. Demons exist on Earth Bet, and they hide around every corner, stalking their prey and waiting for the opportune moment to strike. And many of them have set their sights on Taylor. Luckily for her, she's found a teacher. Enter Rodin, proprietor of the bar Gates of Hell and expert in all things demonic.

Becoming a superhero is already a long and difficult road for Taylor Hebert, but is she prepared for the lifestyle of a Demon Hunter?

Devil Trigger contains examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed. After waking up from her coma, Taylor discovers she's gone from being stick-thin to having the physique of an amateur athlete.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Tying in with her Age Lift, Paige ran away from home to pursue her passion for music and got started thanks to her then-boyfriend's support before everything went to hell for her.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Rather than go by her New Wave cape persona "Glory Girl", Victoria joined the Wards as Antares, an identity she wouldn't adopt until Ward.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Compared to most fan works where he's usually antagonistic towards the Heberts and tries to defend Emma, Alan Barnes does not do that and is supportive to Danny, even helping him build a case against Winslow when his friend tells him about the locker incident. This is in spite of the fact that doing so has the potential of putting Emma on trial, even if she is underage.
  • Gladly goes out of his way to compile all the incidents Taylor made to the faculty alongside Mrs. Knotts, which is arguably the most helpful he's been in any fan work he appears in, especially in canon when he walks away from Taylor he sees her cornered by the Trio.
  • Though we have yet to see her proper, the fact that Carol Dallon allowed Amy and Victoria to join the Wards implies she lacks a lot of her Control Freak tendencies in the source material.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In canon, we don't know enough about Anne Barnes to even know her sexuality. Here, she's a lesbian.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Part of the norm when it comes to Alt!Power fanfics for Taylor, as instead of bugs Taylor is turned into a half-demon with powers similar to that of Vergil. Justified, as Style 2.2 has an unknown party interfere with Queen Administrator as it's connecting to Taylor.
  • Amy Dallon's power is a much weaker cell manipulation ability, which while weaker than her canon powers has been stated to offer more options.
• Adaptation Deviation: Unlike her canon fate of being sent to the Birdcage, Paige avoids that on account of her lawyer being Carol Dallon, who specializes in parahuman cases like hers.
• Adaptation Name Change: Rather than go by Panacea and Shielder, Amy Dallon and Eric Pelham chose the cape names "Soma" and "Barricade" respectively.
• Age Lift: In Worm proper, Paige Mcabee was in her early twenties. In Devil Trigger, she's a teenager if the fact she joined the Wards is any indication.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Taylor and the Protectorate don't really believe that Purity is reforming. Miss Militia wants to give her the benefit of a doubt, citing Kaiser potentially knowing her civilian identity as why she hasn't fully severed ties with them, only for Armsmaster to point out that Purity has solely targeted the ABB, a gang comprised of pan-Asian ethnicities when she could have also targeted the Merchants, who accept pretty much everyone willing to join.
• Arc Villain: The villain of the Subhuman arc is the Bloody Cape: A serial killer who hunts down capes and has murdered both heroes and villains prior to coming to Brockton Bay.
• An Arm and a Leg: When Taylor finds Rune, she discovers she's lost her left arm from the forearm down.
• Ascended Extra: Anne Barnes in canon plays an extremely minor role. Here, she's a devil hunter.
• Berserk Button: While fighting Endbringers, subverting disasters and other global problems, Scion has come across several demons inhabiting Earth Bet well before Taylor Triggered. Scion's actions would eventually lead to him being despised by the Underworld. This hate even extends to anyone the demons think may be connected to Scion, as Orthrus becomes agitated upon seeing Parian, who Triggered with one of Scion's Shards.
• Big Damn Heroes: Twofold in Style 2.9. Taylor saves Parian from being killed by Orthrus, which would later lead to Parian making her a costume as thanks days later. Later in that same chapter, Taylor is saved by Rodin when she's too injured to continue fighting.
• Breather Episode: Style 2.3 to 2.7 are mainly this, focusing on Taylor adjusting to the new developments in her life and learning about the aftermath of the locker incident.
• Bullying the Dragon:
  • Yes, Hookwolf. Try and intimidate and pick a fight with Rodin. See where that gets you. Even Kaiser has more sense not to pick a fight with the bar owner and backs off.
  • Style 2.9 has Orthrus picking a fight with Rodin when the latter saves Taylor from being killed. And considering Orthrus is currently Taylor's Devil's Arm, it clearly bit off more than it could chew.
• Call-Back: A meta-version. When Uber and Leet ask Rodin if he would be willing to star in one of their videos, he asks if they plan on doing any Nintendo themes in the near future. Bayonetta 2 was released for the Wii U, a Nintendo console.
• The Cameo:
  • Contessa makes an appearance in Muscle 3.11. It's implied that she had sex with Rodin, if her limp is any indication.
  • Bayonetta makes a brief appearance at the end of Muscle 3.y.
• Cassandra Truth: While Taylor did eventually believe Rodin about the existence of demons and her newfound nature as a half-demon after her run-in with Orthrus, she still doesn't believe that the source of all parahumans' powers come from an Eldritch Abomination.
• Comically Missing the Point: After news of Shadow Stalker's misdeeds came to light, Colin has been trying to reconnect with the Wards, specifically Chris, though the former is convinced he no longer wants anything to do with him and tells Hannah as much. Hannah tells him Chris has been smiling more often since Colin offered to help advise him. Instead of thinking that, yes, Chris is happy he's teaching him again, Colin asks Hannah if Chris got a girlfriend recently.
• Crash-Into Hello: How Taylor meets Victoria when the former and Danny go to Arcadia for Taylor's placement tests.
• Crossover: Between Worm and Devil May Cry, with Rodin from Bayonetta also being present.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • It's doubtful that Rodin's manhandling of Hookwolf can even be considered this, effortlessly destroying any metal weaponry the Empire cape makes with hardly any effort.
  • In Muscle 3.3, Strix stomps all over Vergil, Antares and Barricade with barely any effort. Throughout the whole fight, he only gets hit once while dancing around the Wards and Taylor.
  • Muscle 3.11 sees Rodin take on Strix. It's over before anyone has a clue what even happened, and Strix never even stood a chance.
• Death by Adaptation: Mark Dallon AKA Flashbang of the New Wave died ten years prior to the start of the story at the hands of the Bloody Cape.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Although unnamed, Word of God states that the Merchant cape that was murdered by the Bloody Cape in Subhuman 1.1 was Mush.
  • Some odd years before coming to Brockton Bay, the Bloody Cape murdered Mouse Protector.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Neil Pelham AKA Manpower of the New Wave was rendered crippled by the Bloody Cape and is paralyzed from the waist down. This, along with Mark Dallon's death and Fleur's some years later contributed to the New Wave disbanding.
• The Dreaded: The Bloody Cape is regarded as this, due to them being a serial killer that hunts capes and has killed more heroes than villains.
• Elemental Weapon: The Devil's Arm Orthrus is a sword imbued with the power of both ice and fire, allowing Taylor to rotate between burning her foes alive with hellfire and subjecting them to freezing temperatures.
• Elemental Powers: The demon Orthrus can spew both fire and ice from its right head and left head respectively. It retains these powers as a Devil's Arm that comes into Taylor's possession.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: By the start of the story, New Wave has been disbanded. Among the many contributions behind the dissolution of the independent cape group, and arguably the major factors, were Flashbang's death in 2001, Manpower being crippled in that same fight, and Fleur's death in 2007. The only active capes left from the remains of New Wave are Sarah and Crystal Pelham, with Crystal's brother Eric having joined the Wards.
• For the Evulz: When Taylor questions why the Fury demon became the Bloody Cape and hunted parahumans, Rodin states this is the case.
  Rodin: As far as the Fury was concerned, parahumans were like deer. Better yet, they were deer who could fight back. Kill it, even. For that thing, they were big game.
• For Want Of A Nail: The Bloody Cape's rampage and murder of certain heroes creates a few nails. The most prominent of those nails is arguably the beginnings of what would eventually become the disbanding of the New Wave. Were it not for their actions, Victoria, Amy, and Eric would be with the New Wave and not the PRT.
• Half-Human Hybrid: When Taylor Triggers, she becomes a half-demon like Vergil and Dante, though Word of God states that she's an Artificial Hybrid rather than a natural-one.
• Hellhound: Not Rachel, mind you, but the demon Taylor encounters in Style 2.8 at the Trainyard, being bigger than Rachel's and sporting two heads for extra measure.
• Hero Killer: Aside from the Endbringers, the Bloody Cape has earned this title due to most of its victims being heroic individuals. Among them was Mark Dallon.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Subverted. While some people have reservations about Taylor's heroics, her destroying Winslow has been met with positive reception on account of just how bad the school was.
• In Medias Res: Like in Worm proper, the first arc shows Taylor having already Triggered and is working on honing her powers while hunting demons in Brockton Bay. The second arc, on the other hand, has Taylor wake up from her Trigger-induced coma and details how she came to be the independent cape Vergil.
• Interface Screw: This is the case in Style 2.2, where as Taylor is Triggering and the Queen Administrator is trying to connect to her, something interferes with the process.
• It's All My Fault: In Interlude 3.x, Armsmaster considers his inability to handle Shadow Stalker his greatest failure. He blames his ineptitude in properly managing the Wards since he focused more on his work and personal glory, reasoning if he had been more strict with Sophia, Taylor would never have Triggered or become Vergil.
• It's Personal: Victoria has a serious grudge against the Bloody Cape (for obvious reasons), so much so in fact that the moment she learns the "Case-53" that she sees Taylor fighting is the same demon that murdered her father, she all but forgoes questioning Taylor in favor of killing it where it stands.
• Know When to Fold Them: Kaiser realizes very quickly that fighting Rodin is a very bad fucking idea and opts to instead take Purity and Hookwolf and leave.
• Locked into Strangeness: Due to her trigger event, Taylor's hair goes from black to white.
• Mythology Gag: In Subhuman 1.7, a user on PHO goes by the username "Tony Redgrave"—an alias that was previously used by Dante in the non-canon prequel novel.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In Subhuman 1.2, Taylor notes how she'll never forget her first meeting with Rodin, which apparently involved the man beating the hell out of Hookwolf. We finally get to see the scene play out in full in Style 2.6.
  • After getting her new cape outfit from Parian, Taylor thanks her, only for Parian to counter that she should be thanking her for saving her from being "monster dog chow." Style 2.9 reveals that Taylor saved her from being killed by Orthrus, a demon in the form of a giant two-headed dog.
• Original Character: The Bloody Cape is this to the setting of the story, being a cape-murdering psychopath responsible for the deaths of both heroes and villains alike. It's eventually subverted as the Bloody Cape is not an OC, but a demon—specifically, the Fury demon from Devil May Cry 5.
  • Played straight with Strix, a member of the Fallen who uses a Sinister Scythe and can summon purple flames. He's actually a demon himself.
• Papa Wolf: In Muscle 3.9, Purity reveals to Taylor that Kaiser is threatening to go to war with the Fallen. Among the missing persons suspected of being kidnapped by the Fallen is Theo Anders.
• Posthumous Character: By the time the story starts, both Mark Dallon and Mouse Protector are already dead, courtesy of the Bloody Cape.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Downplayed. In Interlude 2.1, Rodin reveals that the reason he came to Earth Bet was because Bayonetta "kicked [his] ass" and more or less told him to take a vacation.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Fury demon, the true identity of the Bloody Cape, is described by Taylor as being a ten-foot-tall black lizard with scales dyed in blood. It's also been killing capes, villains and heroes alike, for over ten years.
• Red Baron: Before it came to Brockton Bay, the Fury demon was and still is known by the public as the Bloody Cape. When it settled in Brockton Bay, it earned more than a few new ones, including "Brockton Bay's Jack the Ripper".
• Shouldn't We Be in School Right Now?: Justified for Taylor, as her father pulled her out from Winslow and is working on getting her into Arcadia. As for the rest of the Winslow students, well, Taylor took care of that problem by slicing it into bits. Everyone including the school board approved.
• Spanner in the Works: Greg Veder ended up being the nail Alan needed to build a case against Winslow, having gotten himself a video of Sophia, Emma and Madison shoving Taylor inside her locker by pure accident and coincidence. Just when he thought about deleting said video, Alan came to visit the Veder family.
• Story-Breaker Power: As evidenced by the way he defeated Strix in mere seconds, Rodin could easily resolve most of the demon-related incidents himself. But he came to Earth Bet for a vacation, so he's only going to step in when not acting would cause a massive death toll.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Victoria notes how, in spite of having killed the Bloody Cape and got revenge for the death of her father, she doesn't feel happy or as accomplished as she should be.

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